


Quitting Time

by ancientreader



Category: Original Work
Genre: Humor, Lowkey D/s, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:15:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23799100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: Unflappable archaeologist accidentally summons fed-up demon. Hijinx ensue.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Demon
Comments: 29
Kudos: 63





	Quitting Time

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a treat for SmutSwap 2019 and then languished incomplete on my hard drive for months, but welp lockdown, you know the drill. It's not _exactly_ noncompliant with the original prompt, so I've messaged the prompter to see if they still want it. Meanwhile, possible gift pending.
> 
> Tagged m/m because Grimdark's a male demon, but also: he's a demon, so ...

When Grimdark came through the portal he was mad as . . . Hell. “No rest for the wicked”: truer words, et cetera et cetera. He was too out-of-sorts even to land in the correct upright-with-wings-menacingly-spread position but instead stumbled into a crouch like the one favored in that American sport he could never remember the name of even though Satan was always yammering on about how much fun it was what with all the brain damage. And another thing, Grimdark realized sourly: the membrane of his left wing had a triangular rip smack in the center, so even had he managed to land properly the effect would have been spoiled. The icing on this brimstone-flavored cake was that the rip would make it impossible for him to fly straight until he got it fixed, which looked like being exactly never given that he was _trapped inside a pentagram._

“Oh, my,” said the Summoner.

Grimdark snarled.

“Oh, my,” said the Summoner again.

Grimdark stared at him, balefulness setting turned to 11.

The Summoner had put his hand over his mouth. “Mwew,” he said after a time, and frowned. He took his hand away and rubbed the palm on his trouser leg. “Well,” he enunciated. “Okay. That ... definitely happened.” He might have been referring to the manifestation of a demon five feet away from himself or to the fact that he had just gotten spit on his pants; it wasn’t clear. He was still frowning. Grimdark watched him look around — had Summoners always been this stupid, or had there been a decline in the past however-long-it-had-been since his last Summoning?

A desk and chair stood in front of the windows at the far end of the room; the Summoner brought the chair over nearer to the pentagram and turned it backward before sitting down. He rested his elbows on the chair back and his chin in his left hand, and then he looked at Grimdark. Calmly. Thoughtfully. Quietly. For so long that Grimdark wanted to inspect himself for, who the Hell knew — flaming debris? streaks of soot? body parts of the damned and infamous?

“What the fuck do you want?” he finally said.

“I have no idea,” the Summoner replied. “I wasn’t expecting — well, you. Or anything, really.”

Great. Summoners who didn’t know what they were doing were the _worst._ Grimdark flicked out his tongue. “Sssssssssssss,” he said. It was called a hissy fit for a reason.

The Summoner blinked. “That’s, uh . . . remarkable.”

Grimdark sent his tongue out again; this time he corkscrewed it. Wait, was this asshole _blushing?_

Yes, he was.

The Summoner swallowed, visibly casting about for a subject, and at last said, faintly: “I’ll have to tell my linguist buddies how good they are at working back to fifth-century pronunciation.”

The blush had receded. Grimdark looked away.

“Lucky for me there was already a pentagram on the floor,” the Summoner continued, “am I right?”

Grimdark curled his lip.

“That would be a yes. —Uh, I guess the looming and glaring are customary, but — you should sit down, it’s hard to talk to you like this. I mean, unless you’ll get in trouble with Beelzebub or whoever? Unless you are Beelzebub.”

Grimdark sat. He folded his wings around himself and began morosely to inspect the tear. For fuck’s sake. He just had to be Summoned by some fool who then tried to _make conversation._

“You’re injured.”

Grimdark rolled his eyes but didn’t look up, and in consequence missed seeing the expression that would have prepared him for the Summoner’s snort.

“You _are_ a demon, correct?” the Summoner said. “Those weren’t instructions for summoning a teenager in a demon suit?”

“A _what?_ Of course I’m a demon, do you think formulae written in goats’ blood on vellum in the fifth century of the— the— _this era_ ” — Grimdark spat the last two words — “work to summon anything else?”

“Teenager in a demon suit, then. Good to know.” The Summoner smiled. “But look, does your wing hurt?”

This made approximately the dozenth time Grimdark had thought _What the fuck_ since landing. “What the fuck,” he said. “ _No_ , it doesn’t hurt, it’s a vascularized but uninnervated membrane. It needs stitching, that’s all.”

The Summoner looked relieved. “Do you need any special, uh, materials?”

 _What the fuck_ was not nearly a strong enough response to this. “Like what, unicorn guts? Regular sutures work fine. You could stitch it up for me.” Grimdark was pretty sure he had found his seductive voice. He swept his arm toward himself invitingly.

“Uh-huh,” said the Summoner. “Sorry to disappoint, but I did read horror stories as a kid.”

“Fuck,” Grimdark said. Too bad he wanted the tear mended more than, right this moment, he wanted to bite off the Summoner’s head and pitch it through the window. “It was worth a try.”

The Summoner ignored this. He went back to the desk and rummaged around in the top drawer, from which he finally produced a metal box. “Catch,” he said, tossing it into the pentagram.

It was a military Individual First Aid Kit, thus, thankfully, not marked with a cross or a Mogen David or a crescent moon or what have you, as so many civilian kits were. Seething to himself, Grimdark got to work on his wing. There was an order to these episodes, for Hell’s sake. The Summoner Summoned Grimdark, Grimdark loomed and hissed and glared, the Summoner recoiled in fear and horror, the Summoner collected himself and spoke Grimdark’s True Name, Grimdark at once fell under a compulsion to do the Summoner’s bidding faithfully, and Grimdark continued doing the Summoner’s bidding faithfully right up until the instant when the Summoner mispronounced his True Name and Grimdark tore off his head and then dragged his screaming soul down to Hell, where it could spend eternity repenting along with all the other demon-Summoning nitwits while Grimdark returned to obeying Satan’s every command just as he had been doing before he was Summoned. There. Were. Rules. It was well past time for the Summoner to say Grimdark’s True Name and start making demands: Turn this brick to gold. Turn these pebbles to precious gems. (Had it never occurred to any of these people that whatever their aesthetic merits, the monetary value of gold and gems lay mainly in their scarcity?) Call down a curse on my ex-wife/my ex-husband/my rival the duke/my rival the magnate/my neighbor with the barking dog. Always tedious and _almost_ always petty.

Grimdark concentrated on making his stitches tiny and neat. If one had to be subjugated to an idiot then one might at least be subjugated to the idiot while looking one’s best.

The Summoner watched, propping his chin on one hand. Presently, he said: “You know, if I’d believed in demons twenty minutes ago, I would have thought they were more, I don’t know, frightening.”

Grimdark tied off the last suture and flicked the needle in the Summoner’s direction, glancing up in time to see it bounce off the top of the Summoner’s head. Excellent aim, if he said so himself.

“Whereas you,” the Summoner went on, “instead come off as basically cranky. And you’re not, you know. Uh. Ugly as sin. Shit, that came out wrong. My name’s Alec?” He looked around for the needle and picked it up.

Aaaaand there went another _What the fuck._ “Surely you already know my name.” Grimdark loaded his voice with all available sarcasm and suavity, which made Mr. Summoner Alec blush again, which in turn reminded Grimdark that among his chief weapons against a Summoner were his good looks and seductiveness. Lust was right up Grimdark’s dark, damp alley, as was vanity — his cock was a pluripotent temptation with moss-soft skin whose golden hue was just darker enough than the rest of him to present a contrast and thereby draw the eye. Which ... oh, right, best get to it. Grimdark stretched. 

Just as expected, the Summoner’s eye was drawn. He cleared his throat, he blinked, he cleared his throat again. This could be it, Grimdark thought. He could get _Alec_ under control before _Alec_ got around to world domination or whatever.

“What about you?” Alec-the-Bumbling-Summoner said, doggedly.

“What about me, what?”

“Uh, your name. You’re seducing me now, right? So I feel like I should know your name.”

“Grimdark,” said Grimdark. _I feel like I should know your name?_ Was it a seduction if the party of the first part offered sex and the party of the second part responded by saying “Sure, let’s get acquainted”? In Grimdark’s experience more coaxing and negotiation were generally involved, except in those highly satisfying but sadly rare cases in which the Summoner flung himself into the pentagram in a libidinal frenzy.

“No, come on.”

“You know I can’t lie to you as long as I’m in here, right?”

The Summoner looked incredulous. “And _you_ know there’s no way for me to falsify that statement.”

Ugh, so exasperating. “Then why’d you ask my name?”

“I don’t know! Making conversation! I’ve never met a demon before.”

“Oh, for— You read an invocation out of a grimoire, right? Why don’t you consult the grimoire for further guidance instead of _making conversation_?”

“Because the grimoire is ninety-nine percent bullshit! I summoned you by accident while I was working out the invocation! You think I did all that preparatory crap the grimoire says to do? Oh, sure, I spent a month carrying around a bloodstone _by accident._ I deprived myself of sleep _by accident._ I sacrificed a baby goat _by accident._ Do you _see_ a dead baby goat in here? I don’t even know what a bloodstone _is,_ for Christ’s sake!”

Grimdark flinched.

“Are you _serious_?” The Summoner’s — Alec’s — voice had risen to a glass-shattering pitch. “Are we really in the realm of Christian theology now?”

Grimdark paused. He had flinched automatically, but ... come to think of it, the sound of That Name hadn’t hurt. “Christ,” he said experimentally, under his breath. “Jesucristo. Jesu Krishti. Krist. Hesukristo. Ciise Masiix. Yexus Khetos. Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”

Nope, nothing.

He thought about it. _Oh._ “The name’s been invoked under insalubrious circumstances,” he said.

There was a brief silence. Grimdark thought he had once seen the look the Summoner’s face now wore. But not lately — for the definition of “lately” that meant “since I became a demon several millennia ago.” What did that look mean?

Alec-the-Summoner interrupted these reflections. “What if you try some of the others? Since that one didn’t seem to be a problem.”

Grimdark had been feeling — he gritted his teeth — _sheep_ ish (ha, ha); now that feeling was transubstantiated into rage. How many times had he been Summoned? How many times had the Names, no, the names, burned him and made him bleed? “Yahweh. El. Eloah. Shaddai. Elohim. Ehyeh. Tzevaot.”

Alec-the-Summoner was not the object of this rage.

Grimdark went on: “Ehyeh asher ehyeh. Baal. Astarte. Marduk. Moloch. Atargatis. Yam. Ashat. Dagon. Ashima . . . ” Name after name after name after name. When he had worked his way through all the Canaanites and Babylonians and Assyrians he could remember, he started in on Allah and Allah’s antecedents. He gave up on invoking them in any special order, but anyway it had long ago become obvious that none had any power over him. Name after name after name after name. He was hoarse, but he went on reciting the names until afternoon became violet dusk. Then Alec-the-Summoner was handing him a glass of water and he was drinking it. He had thought he was tired when he landed in the pentagram, but now —

The pentagram.

Alec-the-Summoner—Alec-the-Summoner who was standing right next to Grimdark and well inside the pentagram—shrugged. “So far the invocation is the only piece of this that worked the way it was supposed to. I have no idea what your True Name is supposed to be, and if I did I couldn’t be sure of pronouncing it right, and if I mispronounce it and that’s the one _other_ accurate piece of demon-summoning lore then I’m up a creek anyway. Up a river of fire? You looked thirsty. Is there even water —? I don’t know, it didn’t seem worth worrying about the fucking pentagram at this point.”

Grimdark set down the empty glass and stared at him.

“I mean — do you _want_ to drag me screaming down to Hell?”

“You entered the pentagram.”

“That’s not an answer.”

But Alec-the-Summoner must have banked on hearing a favorable one: he was holding himself unnaturally straight and his eyes widened as fear began to encroach. Grimdark stood up, shook out his wings, closed his eyes, and crossed the pentagram.

There was nothing: not a shock, not a pinprick, not a trickle of cold; not even the evanescent sting he might feel having touched the tip of a just-extinguished match. The room was high-ceilinged and at least fifty feet long; the pentagram was at one end, a bank of open windows at the other. Grimdark rose in a short spiral, flapped once, and coasted across; he landed, looking out, and let the steady cool breeze flow over the membranes of his wings.

This room was four storeys up in a city in a dry hot place. Now that day had drawn back, the streets were lively with traffic, with human laughter, with flashes of music from the radios of passing cars and from phones mounted on the handlebars of bicycles. On the corner two people were busking; the man drummed fast and hard, like someone running away, and the woman sang slow and mournful and cold, a melody like a thing to be fled. The city was too small for its light to drown the stars, and the night was moonless, so when Grimdark looked up he found the glittering wash of the Silver River only a little faded. The odor of toasted cumin rose from the window just below; when the Summoner came and leaned up against the window frame, Grimdark could smell him too — the sweat from the day’s heat and the sharper sweat from his earlier, already dissipated alarm. The buskers’ terrifying song had ended; now their voices braided, and the woman was playing the oud. Grimdark wanted to hear the terrifying song again.

“Do demons breathe?”

Grimdark turned toward the Summoner. Alec. Master, if not of Grimdark, then of the hundred-and-eighty-degree conversational turn. “Not by default,” Grimdark said. “If we want to pass among humans, then yes.”

“And — you were thirsty? So if you drink, do you process the liquid somehow? Do you eat?”

“You’re very practical,” Grimdark replied, watching the Summoner’s mouth. “Same answer: if we want to pass, then yes.” His throat was still sore from his long recitation and this reminded him of the feeling of the cool water rushing over it as he swallowed. He had passed as human before; he had eaten and drunk. He could have banished the soreness with a thought.

“But you were reciting all those names. Were you trying to pass? Because you really seemed hoarse, and thirsty, and you sure didn’t look as if you even knew I was there— ”

“I love Hell,” Grimdark said, returning to the question behind the question Alec-the-Summoner had asked earlier. Out in the city, the drummer had resumed — slow and soft now, and the oud player was singing alone again, her voice twining and beckoning: a song to encourage a lover to one’s bed. “I’m a demon. Hell is my natural habitat.” When had he last hissed? Hours ago, surely; time to demonstrate his demonic nature again, in that case. Grimdark drew back his lips, bared his fangs, and conducted the demonstration. He made it a long one.

Alec-the-Summoner waited until Grimdark was finished and then said, “Okay, so it’s your natural habitat. What’s that like?”

A glass of water and a cool breeze, and now the questions: when the Summoners weren’t giving orders, they were asking questions. It was ever thus, except that, except that, except that _this Summoner had no power over Grimdark._ If he had ever had any. Grimdark turned on him and pinned him to the wall under the blinding shadow of his fully extended wings.

“Ten minutes ago,” Grimdark said, “I didn’t know I could cross a line of salt without burning instantly into a smoking heap. Two hours ago I labored under the delusion that a few combinations of human sound could scourge me. Say the name, Summoner.” He felt Alec-the-Summoner’s breath on his own lips. He could angle his head just so, and shock the Summoner with a bite behind his ear. A sharp demon-toothed bite. A trickle of blood that he would lap up and feed back to the Summoner on his tongue. “What do you think will happen? _Say it._ ”

“Your secret name?” whispered Alec-the-Summoner. “The name to let me rule you? Pity I don’t know it.”

He was straining against Grimdark’s hold — but not, Grimdark thought, with all his strength. He must know it wouldn’t suffice anyway, yet he was still scarcely afraid. Grimdark drew up his wings to let in the small illumination of the stars and allow the Summoner a good look at the greed and lust on his face; he shifted his grip to hold both of the Summoner’s wrists in one hand, pulled in his talons, and reached for the top button of the Summoner’s shirt. That bravado might give way now.

No. The Summoner wasn’t straining against Grimdark’s hold; he was straining into it. His gaze, now that there was light available, fastened itself on Grimdark’s mouth; then it traveled, up to his eyes and slowly, slowly, down to his mouth again and further down yet, taking in his shadowed armpits, his dark nipples, the V of his hips. Grimdark watched the Summoner realize that the head of _the demon’s_ big hard prick was already wet enough to glisten. He opened the first shirt button. And the second.

The third.

Alec-the-Summoner said, “I would have expected you just to tear it off.”

“Expected? I thought you didn’t expect a demon in the first place,” Grimdark said,

Both of them were whispering now — not like enemies: like conspirators. _Those who breathe together;_ Grimdark knew his Latin, of course. With his free hand he had reached into Alec-the-Summoner’s partly opened shirt. Now he let out the talon on his forefinger and pushed it into the tip of first one and then the other nipple, just shy of hard enough to draw blood.

The Summoner shuddered all over and put his mouth to Grimdark’s ear. “Do you want me to rule you?” He nosed at Grimdark’s earlobe, took it between his lips, licked along the edge; Grimdark thought of a hoop piercing the lobe — small, gold, a hint for one who might know what to make of it; Alec-the-Summoner gave a soft surprised sound, pleased, and sucked Grimdark’s earlobe in like the head of a cock, rolling the ring between tongue and teeth, tugging at it. Grimdark pressed forward, between the Summoner’s legs.

The Summoner drew back, wet-mouthed. “I guess I don’t need to know what Hell’s like,” he said. “All the cumin’s up here. And the singing. And the Milky Way. And the cock.”

They looked at each other.

“The grimoires say I can keep you here by binding you to me with your True Name. But the grimoires are bullshit and I don’t know your True Name anyway: we’ve established that.”

For the first time since the Summoner had handed him a glass of water, Grimdark felt the tug of Hell. He had not realized, until the moment when he despaired, that he had begun to hope. He let go the Summoner’s — Alec’s — hands.

“Good,” Alec said. “I have an idea, since you want this,” and he took two handfuls of Grimdark’s hair and yanked backward — oh, _that_ was what it felt like when he exerted the whole of his strength — and while Grimdark could think only of the pain Alec shoved him till he overbalanced. He dropped hard and landed with Alec on top, kneeling on his outspread upper arms and sitting on his chest. Grimdark’s wings flared out behind him. He beat them once against the dusty floor and then subsided.

“I know you can buck me off,” Alec said, peaceably, smiling into Grimdark’s eyes, “but first tell me you didn’t just get even harder than you were before. And if you did, then stay where you are, and let’s talk.” 

He slid backward till he was sitting in the cradle of Grimdark’s hips, and with that Grimdark’s arms were free; in any case, all Grimdark had ever had to do was roll Alec off himself and tear out his throat.

The demon gazed at the summoner, and waited to learn what would happen next.

Alec bent down and drew his thumb over Grimdark’s lips, his touch almost as light as their breaths had been when Grimdark was pressing him against the wall. “I am sexually tempted,” he said. “Which is not news to you. And whatever you look like when you’re in Hell, if ‘look like’ even makes sense as a way to put it, you obviously have to pass to some minimal extent if you’re going to get over when you’re here. Still: wings, check; tongue, check. Apparently those aren’t putting me off any, don’t know how other people would react but there you go, kinktomato and all. Only, here’s the thing, you really were thirsty, weren’t you? And I’d lay money on your throat being scratchy. You weren’t putting those feelings on in order to pass.

“So: What, handsome demon Grimdark whose True Name I don’t know, is up with that?”

“The names —” Grimdark began. They must have had some power after all.

Skeptically: “Uh-huh. You said it yourself, you were expecting the names to scourge you, not make you need a drink of water after reciting them nonstop for hours. I can see your pulse in your throat. Did you put it there on purpose?”

Slowly, Grimdark shook his head.

“I didn’t think so.” Alec bent to Grimdark’s mouth and bit it, upper and lower lips together, making them sting. “Don’t move,” he said, “ _this_ is a spell I’m working on you now,” and kissed the corners of Grimdark’s mouth, grinding their crotches together. Grimdark sucked in his breath. “See?” Alec said. “That too. I work the spell,” he said, rubbing over Grimdark’s nipples with the heels of his hands, “but you’re supplying the ingredients.”

“What?” Grimdark said, baffled. “What ingredients?” Alec lay full length atop him and began to turn his head this way and that, nipping at the sides of his neck, lightly but also, unpredictably, hard enough to make him squirm. Grimdark didn’t decide to cant up his hips and wrap his legs around Alec’s waist, but found that this had happened and that he was striving, essentially, to push his cock and balls right into the rough canvas of Alec’s trousers, and that this hurt. He liked that, he wanted more of it; he ground upward savagely, pushing his hips off the floor — he was strong, he was a demon; “This?” Alec asked, flat hand an inch from Grimdark’s cheek. “Yeah, do it,” Grimdark said.

“Desire,” Alec said, “that’s the chief ingredient” — he slapped Grimdark’s face, left cheek then backhand on his right — “and the means to satisfy it. You made the earring; can you make lube, too?” He got up, stripped off, knelt between Grimdark’s bent knees, rubbed at his slippery ass, laughed a little. “Nice slick, that. I guess I should’ve expected as much. Don’t open up now, sweetheart, I want to stretch you myself. Nuh-uh, no skipping any steps, we’re doing this the aboveground way —” He started with two fingers, coaxing, pressing, insisting: “Is that slow enough for you? Yeah?”

“You’re inconsistent,” Grimdark told him between gasps. “Demonic lube yes, demonic relaxation no. You — ah — make no sense —”

“You said it before, I’m _practical_ ,” Alec said, working in a third finger, a fourth: “I like pushing my way in like this, I like my fucks slick and wet the way I’ve got you, sweet Christ you’re gorgeous with half my hand inside you — but I didn’t have any lube with me, did I?” He twisted his fingers, pulling out.

Grimdark beat his wings against the floor and picked up his knees, spreading his legs as wide as he could. “For Sssssatan’s sake, will you fuck me already?” What was this? Not _demonic seduction._ Something else. Was he, Grimdark, being seduced?

That wasn’t quite it, either.

_Desire._

Alec said, “See, I don’t get the impression that you want to drag me back to Hell.” He was dipping his fingers into the lube puddling out of Grimdark’s arse in embarrassing quantities.

 _Embarrassing quantities?_ When had he ever been embarrassed before? Grimdark tried to hiss but instead found himself extending his tongue to lick at Alec’s nipples.

“Oh fuck do that again,” Alec said, “it’s like, like —”

Grimdark did it again.

“ — Jesus _Christ_ mother _fuck_ like you’ve got menthol on your tongue when you do that, no way am I sending you back to Hell if — you — don’t — want — to _— go_ — ” and he had slung Grimdark’s legs over his shoulders and fucked right in and it was — it was — it was —

sweat prickling underneath him on the wooden floor and the wood heating with the heat of his blood moving under his skin and his heart pounding hard enough to frighten him and the love song drifting up through the cumin-scented air and the stink of Alec’s armpits and his own armpits the ache in his back from being folded nearly in half and the noise he heard himself make every time Alec’s cock rubbed his prostate and he hadn’t thought about a prostate but he had one and his cock was wet and Alec’s mouth, his mouth, and did demons have orgasms oh lowercase-h-hell yes they did — and archaeologists immediately followed —

*

“Your hypothesis,” Grimdark said, incredulous, “is that all that demonic lore fell apart more or less because I just didn’t feel like complying anymore?”

“Well, it accounts for the observed facts, doesn’t it? I’m glad you can still fly, though. It would have been a pain in the ass getting ourselves back to my place at two in the morning otherwise.”

Grimdark surreptitiously watched Alec fluff up a pillow and then emulated him.

*

Sleeping was a pleasant novelty and Grimdark did it well, but when he awoke he discovered that staying aboveground and embodied had its disadvantages. His mouth was fuzzy and tasted like elephant shit; it was not easy trying to piss through morning wood; and Alec the Stupid Archaeologist Summoner might be an excellent lay but he was basically the equivalent of a three-toed sloth in the morning, there was not a Goddamned thing (ahem) in his kitchen, and worst of all, if you didn’t get a double espresso on board soon enough after waking, tiny men began driving tiny but well-honed lances through both your temples and also your eyeballs, rapidly and with enormous enthusiasm.

Sweet motherfucking Satan.

But, on the other hand: cumin; the oud; the prostate; the stars of the Silver River; and Alec the Stupid Archaeologist Summoner.

Grimdark magicked his wings invisible and went out in search of coffee.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of my demonology, such as it is, comes from [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/40357/you-can-control-a-demon-by-knowing-its-true-name-but-why).
> 
> Grimdark's litany of names for Jesus Christ comes from [here](https://www.elijahnotes.com/heres-how-to-say-jesus-christ-in-25-different-languages/).


End file.
